Facebook and CNN: The Power of the Social Web Revealed
Today Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States. As several million people attended the inauguration in Washington D.C., Facebook and CNN invited the rest of the world to watch the moment online. Online visitors to CNN.com were able to use its video player to watch the live broadcast coverage of the event. We also saw what has be one of the most brilliant examples of the real-time web in action: next to the video, the Facebook status updates of those watching streamed by in the sidebar.
The integration of the status updates on CNN.com Live was powered by Facebook Connect, Facebook's relatively new platform for porting your online identity anywhere on the web. When a web site uses Facebook Connect, visitors can easily authenticate on that site using their Facebook account information - no need for a separate username and password. Besides simply being convenient, it allows people to log on as their "real" selves, a trend that perhaps speaks to the beginning of the end of online anonymity.
If there was any doubt of the power this platform provides, we've just witnessed an incredible - if not historic - example of what it can do. President Obama's inauguration is sure to knock Facebook Connect ahead of its main competitor in the realm of portable social identities, Google Friend Connect, whose current claim to fame is a blog widget that does little more than the falling-from-grace Yahoo's MyBlogLog widget does now, save for some over-hyped integration with social services like Twitter, Plaxo, and Orkut.
In the end, not only did Facebook Connect provide an interactive look into the thoughts and feelings of all those watching CNN's coverage via the web - it did so without crashing. According to the statistics, there were 200,000+ status updates, which equaled out to 3,000 people commenting on the Facebook/CNN feed per minute. Right before Obama spoke, that number grew to 8500. Additionally, Obama's Facebook Fan Page has more than 4 million fans and more than 500,000 wall posts. (We wonder if anyone on his staff will ever read all those!).
CNN didn't do too badly either. They broke their total daily streaming record, set earlier on Election Day, and delivered 5.3 million streams. Did you have trouble catching a stream? We didn't hear of any issues, but if you missed out, you can watch it again later today. CNN will replay the live video at 3 PM, 5 PM, 9 PM, and 12 midnight (EST) on cnn.com/video.
For more political coverage as it relates to the web, see also our post from last night 7 Online Things You Can Do to Help Obama Restore America.
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I saw the stream live and it was great although with a few (understandable) hiccups. The facebook integration was nothing great because it had just some people shouting I'm watching history in the making and doing not particularly insightful comments. There was a big lack of interaction between people. An integration of the stream with twitter would have been much more interesting and useful.
What disappointed me was that after heavy publicity on CNN, this CNN.com Live service is not actually available to users in Australia.
Not sure whether you could use this in New Zealand but I woke up at 3.30am AEST to get this message on CNN.com Live :
http://chrislive.tumblr.com/post/71840327/very-disappointed-that-after-all-the-publicity
The CNN/Facebook integration was cool, but I found myself longing for CNN/Twitter integration.
CNN was hicuppy, slow and my connection broke just before Obama took the oath. Luckily CNN radio was working so I caught the audio until about 10 minutes into his address, when the video kicked back in. However, CNN was way more on the ball than MSNBC or MTV. Their live-streaming was terrible.
I agree with the above commenter that while the Facebook-integration was neat, Twitter would have made for a more interactive experience. However, Twitter, in classic Twitterness, broke for the duration of the swearing in and address. Way to go, Twitter! ;)
I've watched CNN and Hulu, both worked very well (from Romania), although it seemed that the video quality was better on Hulu. At some point I even watched the streams in parallel with no hiccups.
The coverage of today's events are awesome! But why on earth did you choose Rev. Jackson of all people to interview? I'm trying to be forgiving of his horrific comments toward Obama prior to the election, but really don't think many people care to hear his views at this point.
I watched from Budapest, Hungary. I was put in queue for a connection, but didn't have to wait more than a minute. I agree with the consensus that facebook integration was nothing special, in fact the scrolling gushes of 10,000 teenagers grew tedious fast.
Would integrated twitter really have been that much better? Slighter less "uninteractive" perhaps but probably not that much more entertaining.
The real feat here was the massive amount of streaming and load handling on the hardware side. Kudos to CNN and FB for that.
"We also saw what has be one of the most brilliant examples of the real-time web in action: next to the video, the Facebook status updates of those watching streamed by in the sidebar."
Posted by: Corvida
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January 20, 2009 1:43 PM
I think the FB integration is what made The Difference with CNN compared to other sites that were covering the event. Yes the almost 14 mil streams served is very high, but it's actually to be expected seen the internet video penetration in the last years - the event today was only surfacing a part of the people that are used to consume video on line. The key point I consider to be the FB integration since it allowed multi directional communication - the presenters were reading messaged from people during the event, the users could see the reaction of other users - and thus creating a momentum - an "etat d'esprit" - around the event. It was actually a different experience from what you get when you're watching a TV event with family/friends
I hope that CNN and FB will do more of that in the future.
Kudos to all the CDNs involved :)
It was a very cool experience. I wanted to go to DC but couldn't manage it. But I never would have known what that person next to me what thinking. But using this allowed me to not only watch with my own friends but see what the crowd was thinking, too. Outstanding.
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I can't tell from the screenshots how this worked. Did it filter based on your friend list?
If it did, that would be pretty cool. If you were watching any event live and suddenly had a group of your friends who randomly happened to be watching and commenting on the same thing. That would be pretty powerful.
Absent using the social graph in some way, I tend to agree with others that it seems underwhelming. Combining video with chat has been done several times. Even if it is Facebook status, it just doesn't seem revolutionary.
We keep hearing the value is in the relationshp information. It seems like this would have been a good way to demonstrate the value.
i watched it on CNN and online at the same time.(singapore)
worked fine as well.
its historical on so many levels its just amazing.
usa 2.0 ?
carol
http://www.jobstaxi.com
great! unfortunatly I missed that momment.
social network technology brings our world flatter and wider.
I think that it is very ironic that CNN an old mono directional media company and Facebook a web 2.0 closed source content sharecropping silo teamed up on a day that we should associate with freedom and fairness.
Millions of dollars were made and will be made on the backs of members actions and content by both of these companies and very little if any will go back to the members or members communities.
It was great, but can we discuss the issue of 'I love my little elf boy' on the FB/CNN login page? See my TwitPic for a screenshot. A disgruntled employee/translations gone bad strikes again?
http://twitpic.com/153m8
CNN connection was fine here in California.
CNN connection works well here in Spain.
;O)
Wow! Incredible! I'm downunder here in Australia and I watched it too.
The coverage was seamless with no stop/start, no juddery images or sound drop outs, and most importantly no drop outs at crucial moments like the actual inauguration!
Yeah I watched it on the telly - with the bonus of no social-network 'wannabes' who think that yelling their opinion at me at this historic moment was more important than what I wanted to watch.
i had to watch it on BBC since CNN's stream kept breaking. it was fun to see the facebook posts while they lasted, but as soon as the video stream became unreliable, i switched to an overseas competitor. i heard from tons of friends who had the same problem. only a few seemed to find a ready solution.